


six times!

by pasteur



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: 15 Days of FatT 2018, F/M, Trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-18 20:47:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13689507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pasteur/pseuds/pasteur
Summary: today will be the seventh, they say.





	six times!

It was too cold to be out here at night, even if the trees did cut the wind down... a little. The breeze bit, with a smell of salt sweetened slightly by pine and honey. Bees. There must be bees around, he thought. Maybe the hermits kept hives alongside their treetop villages? Have to watch out for that. But it wasn't important, what was important was heading further out, keeping his lantern lit, finding the shore.

He found it as the sound of gulls began to reverberate through what was left of the trees as they thinned in the last hundred paces, sun just beginning to bend around the horizon. Cut against that magnificent figure of burning iron was the one person in all of Rosemerrow. He called her name and she turned, hair caught by the breeze, backlit in the dawn, and caught by the light and shadow. Her eyes and his. She didn't smile. She didn't even blink as she fell, eyes drifting away from his until they stared straight up at the stilldark sky, body still with intention, a swan dive, a perfect arc described in flesh, arms pushed out by grace and bangs pushed by wind and robe tied tight to the chest and the splash before he knew it shoes kicked off before he knew it over the edge lantern forgotten what use in the wetwaves the sunlit scene of a second splash.

Under the waves, in the flat blue expanse of the bay, he finally opened his eyes to see her in the middle distance, and kicked and pushed the water to climb nearer in three dimensions to nearly no avail. She spun effortlessly to face him again, this time with a toothy grin, green water blue around her, hair blown away from a grin. A hand outstretched, and she split the distance in half, in half again, enough that his efforts before in vain made less vanity and more... purchase. Helpless but not alone, he gestured to what he thought was the surface. She shook her head, opened her mouth, and let a bubble escape. His hands clawed the bubblepath, knowing the route, but her hand caught his ankle. Seized, taken aback, again still again in the rending water that banishes all senses but sight and dampens even that, she wrapped an arm on his stillsmall waist and propelled them, dancing through the tides.

On the surface, ashore away from rock and tide, on solid sand and grit-damp land, he rung out his long hair and let out a wail. She shook her head with a violence to clear the water and put a pinky to squeegee to hear. "What did you think you were doing?"

"S-s-saving you." he shivered. He tried to grin, failed, looked askance, looked back to her.

"Bertie. Bertie sweet I can't believe they let you out of the library."

"They told me I had to go, actually; six hours out of twenty-four."

"So you came looking for me?" Laughter sat comfortably in her voice but did not come out.

"I - I had heard what they had dared you to do. I was afraid you'd try to breathe under the waves."

She had no answer for him but a stare, a calculating discerning first him, then the sun halfway above the sea.  
"I can do it. I know I can. But I don't need saltbreath to make that dive, and everyone in the peaks should know it."

"I know, I just... I worry about you."

She stepped over and ruffled his hair.   
"Bertie. Now, none of that." She smiled until he did too. "Don't go chasing after me next time. If I didn't see you you might not've made it, with a head like that."

"Balion." She waited expectantly. "Th-thank you."

"Don't mention it." She offered him a hand and began to scout the best way back up the cliffs to town. "Actually... do. You're a good witness, Gilbert Lutz."

"Ah, well." He stared at her with what would become his most characteristic sheepish grin. "You should come see me in the stacks sometime."


End file.
